personal

26 June, 2011

Internetless

The house move is complete – hooray! The new house is all kinds of wonderful. If you haven’t already been round for a cup of tea and a look round, then you should. Even if you’re outside of Nairn. Even if you’re outside of the UK.

It will be a really good cup of tea, I promise.

The one problem with moving is that internet connections and phone lines aren’t very good at it. (Neither are washing machines, coincidentally.) This means that I am without an internet connection, and my blogging and tweeting and Facebooking and obsessive blog reading are all heavily restricted. My phone is doing its best to use its ‘Wifi Hotspot’ feature to convert 3G into Wifi, and it’s doing a fine but slow job.

So until I’m back online, the blog will be a bit quiet. Never fear – I’ll be back soon.

16 February, 2009

Valentines Weekend – Part 1

It’s been… more than a rough week. A rough few months, really. The recession is not fun, nor was being without my laptop, so with money worries and the inability to get some release via art and writing, I’ve been a bit of a stressed-out mess.

I like Valentines, though. In the past, when I was young, it was just a sort of embarrassment-ridden sideshow that I hoped would pass by without any stupid pranks coming my way. Once I actually started doing that whole relationship thing, it’s always been something i enjoyed – though for Dave and I, who keep up a pretty-much constant stream of romance, trying to think up a way to make Valentines different was always going to be a struggle.

This week, in particular, has been quite the mix – I only just got my laptop back, and having the tool for my artistic release back within my reach has infused me with an odd, work-obsessed desperation to use it and to create. Around mid-week, Dave kept me on the phone all the walk home and I stated, too sharply, that I wanted to have some peace at home to work instead of going to Inverness – only to step into the door and find the house candlelit, and Dave waiting on the coach with a movie night prepared. Thoughts of work were quickly abandoned, but that didn’t stop the feelings of guilt… I try very hard to balance work, art and love and keep running semi-independently, and it’s very easy to mis-step.

27 June, 2008

Well, it's nice to actually GET paid

Just got my first paycheck today. =D

It’s not much – £90 for just under a week’s worth of work, I’m gonna say around 3 full days – but it gets me out of the messy situation of being unable to pay the hosting bills for my site. Without my sites, Emma is a sad kitten. >: Plus, the site’s form an important, if grossly underestimated, part of my livelihood – publicising my work and giving me an outlet to sell it.

I’m working in Vue Cinemas right now, and it was a slight culture shock to begin with… I’ve never held a ‘real’ job before, and being stuck in the arse-end of the employment, otherwise known as retail, probably wasn’t a nice soft welcome. I had trouble not being able to work at full-potential and help out when I was getting trained up, I am easily wounded by customer abuse, and my ever-mysteriously frail health state meant that after enough hours with movie times and short staffing preventing me from taking a break, I’d be on my last legs and unable to keep standing unless I was concentrating on till-work. This triggered a return of my old mate depression, which didn’t help.

Buuuttttt I’m doing okay now. The hours are long and the pay is next to nothing, but I can do it fairly well and enjoy it. =] With luck and enough saving, myself and my boyfriend will be able to save up and get an apartment of our own and move out of our temporary carvan accomodation. xD But the current housing crisis makes that tricky.

Work is… an interesting experience, and one that’s drastically cutting into my time spent writing and drawing. But it’s contributing – to society, to the relationship, to a future. It’s also being part of the loathed rat-race and being penned in by minimum wage and the restrictions of my age, but it’s doing my best to make my own living. And that’s nice.

SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER SEASON NAO. OSHI- =P

E.Maree

xoxo